Jean Cocteau
Poetry and playwriting to painting and film directing; decorating a chapel to designing a postage stamp: these activities can only begin to scratch the surface of the work of one of the most remarkable artists and polymaths of the twentieth century, Jean Cocteau. Born in a small town near Paris in 1889 in an upper-class household, Cocteau started writing at the age of ten. His poems had been publicly read by famous actor Edouard de Max by the time he was sixteen. By the turn of the century, he was well-known in artistic circles, although opinions of his work ranged from admiration for its originality to suspicions of dilettantism. Cocteau soon put the latter opinions to rest by his work with other artists, including his collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso, and Erik Satie that resulted in the ballet Parade (1917). This work created controversy, including audience protests and critical condemnation, but it was also crucial in opening the door to the artistic movement that would come to be known as Surrealism. Cocteau's artistic work expanded to all spheres that he felt he could add with a poetic voice. In the nineteen-twenties much of his output focused on writing, including works such as the psychological novel Thomas the Impostor (1923), Les Enfants Terribles (1929), as well as the plays Orphée (1930) and La Voix Humaine (1930). Cocteau also created the key surrealist film The Blood of a Poet (1930). His favorite theme, the connection between poetry and death, was evident in his later films, Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950), and The Testament of Orpheus (1961). In his later years, Cocteau parlayed a lifelong fascination with the poetic potential of the visual into the creation of drawings and paintings. As had been the case with his other work, Cocteau did not feel constrained by traditional expectations about the medium, mixing freely traditional tools like pastels with materials such as pipe cleaners, lumps of sugar, and lipstick. After a fruitful and provocative life as an artist, Jean Cocteau passed away in his family chateau in 1963.
